It is time for home students to pay their fair share

I cannot believe that home students are complaining about the prospect of their tuition fees going from £9,250 to £10,500 in the next five years.

This is the sort of increase that international students have been paying every year of the past decade to cover for stagnating home student fees, which have been £9,000 from 2012/13 and £9,250 from 2017 onwards.

It is neither sustainable nor fair. It isn’t fair that international students have to pay more than three times a home student for a worse experience than a home student gets due to our visa and guarantor costs, lack of access to public funds and loans, and limited working hours.

Imagine the uproar if I had to pay 3 times a UK citizen for the same iPhone just because I was born on a different soil. It’s the same iPhone – so don’t scam me, and understand that the government can’t afford to support universities and that tuition fees will never be free again.

I have been to five NUS conferences and every single one discussed the same points – and none of the goals established in the previous conferences were achieved. Do you know why that is?

I am tired of some student representative colleagues arguing for the same tired arguments as if we were back in 1998, when tuition fees were first introduced. I want a castle, a jet and 50 km of land and sometimes when I sleep I have dreams about it – if I thought that was possible I would be as delusional as these home students.

When did student advocacy become about promising and arguing for unrealistic goals – from getting rid of landlords to fighting against freedom of speech on campus?

Unrealistic dreams

Then there’s those that supported UCU strikes that mean that myself and fellow students in my year missed nearly one term of studies and lectures – while they also argue for removing tuition fees because students are not getting their money’s worth.

Do they not see their hypocrisy? Do they not understand that home student fees remaining the same means that international students will soon have to pay £62,000 for a year of studying, more than 6.5 times home fees?

In fact, that is already the case with the Medicine program at Oxford. I understand the arguments about university greed and mismanagement – but working for two years in a university and receiving a degree in higher education, I understand very clearly that the finance model for universities in the UK is not sustainable, and part of the change that is needed is for home students to pay their fair share – a tuition fee that adjusts for inflation every year.

Fixing the current financial model of universities doesn’t just need the university management and the government. Kier Starmer is not our daddy, and we need to understand a suitable university model will include everyone paying their fair share to be part of some of the best universities in the world.

It is an incredible privilege to get a tuition fee loan and a maintenance loan whose repayment terms are income contingent.

I know I sound bitter, but it seems like some home students do not understand how great the support they are receiving from their government is and how tough international students are having it in comparison.

I wish one day to have this level of privilege when I can walk into an NUS/SU event and act as if I can solve the conflict in the Middle East but unfortunately, I need to find a job because unlike home students, I don’t have access to welfare benefits in the UK.